Ellen Gray

As the one character who grounds a story that would otherwise seem like a random collection of bad things happening to so-so people, Britton's the only reason I could imagine watching American Horror Story past the three episodes I've seen.

Rob Owen

Mike Hale

American Horror Story has the potential to be a lot of fun, if that style and cleverness can be eventually coupled with characters we care about and a narrative that feels less like a haunted house sampler, stitched with threads of Stephen King, Hammer Films and Lars von Trier's TV series "The Kingdom."

Matthew Gilbert

American Horror Story, from Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk of "Glee" and "Nip/Tuck," is a very standard creep-fest, an aggressively stylized mash-up of familiar haunted-house movies including "The Amityville Horror," "The Haunting," and "The Shining."

Linda Stasi

The scariest thing about American Horror Story, the highly anticipated FX series from the guys who brought you "Glee" and "Nip/Tuck," is that almost everything in the entire show has been cribbed (or crypt-ed, in this case) from every other American horror story.

Robert Bianco

Daynah Burnett

So much of the outright horror is recycled from films-The Shining, Don't Look Now, Poltergeist-but the plotting and pacing feel vaguely original, sometimes complicated and sometimes satirical, like American Beauty.

Matt Roush

Brian Lowry

AHS derives inspiration from so many horror films there's some fun in simply identifying those moments. But there's also a surreal quality that feels wildly overdone--and periodically risks tumbling from inspiring fright into inducing giggles.

Hank Stuever

Jonathan Storm

American Horror Story may not rank that high on a TV list, but fans of this kind of thing will want to chop themselves in half, strangle in a bathtub, and slit their throats--just to name a few of the things that happen in the first two episodes--if they miss it.